Espresso Tales (9 page)

22. Chow

“Now tell me, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn, straightening the crease of his trousers as he crossed his knees. “Tell me: have you written your dreams down in that little notebook I gave you?” Bertie did not cross his legs. He was unsure about Dr Fairbairn, and he wanted to be ready to leap to his feet if the psychotherapist became more than usually bizarre in his statements. The best escape route, Bertie had decided, would be to dart round the side of his desk, leap over the psychotherapist's leather-padded couch, and burst through the door that led into the waiting room. From there he could launch himself down the stairs, sliding down the banister, if need be, and run out into the safety of the street. No doubt somebody would call the police and Dr Fairbairn would be led off to Carstairs, which Bertie understood to be the place where people of this sort sometimes ended up. They would take good care of him there, as the doctors would all be friends of his and would perhaps allow him to play golf in the hospital grounds while he was getting better.

He looked at Dr Fairbairn. He noticed that the tie which the psychotherapist frequently wore–the one with the teddy-bear motif–was missing, and that in its place there was a dark silk tie with a question-mark motif. Why would Dr Fairbairn have a question-mark on his tie? Bertie was intrigued.

“Yes, I've written down my dreams,” said Bertie. “But can you tell me, Dr Fairbairn: why have you got those question-marks on your tie?”

Dr Fairbairn laughed. “You're always very observant about what I'm wearing, Bertie. Why do you think this is?”

“Because I can see your tie,” said Bertie. “I have to look at you when I talk to you and I see what you're wearing.”

Dr Fairbairn stared at Bertie. “You're not jealous, are you, Bertie? You're not jealous of my tie, are you?”

Bertie drew a deep breath. Why should he think that he should be jealous, when he already had a tie at home? “No, I'm not jealous,” he said. “I just wondered.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded. “You wouldn't by any chance have thought of cutting my tie off? Have you thought that about your father's ties?”

Bertie's eyes narrowed. Would they let Dr Fairbairn wear a tie in Carstairs? he wondered. Or would they take it away from him? Would they cut if off? Dr Fairbairn was always going on about other people's anxieties that things would be cut off; well, it would teach him a lesson if somebody came and cut his own tie off. That would serve him right.

“I've never wanted to do that,” he said quietly. “I like Daddy's ties. He's a got a tartan one that he sometimes wears with his kilt.”

The mention of a kilt seemed to interest Dr Fairbairn, who wrote something down on his pad of paper. The psychotherapist opened his mouth to speak, but Bertie was too quick for him. “My dream,” he said, fishing into his pocket for the notebook he had been given. “We mustn't forget my dream.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Why don't you tell me all about it? I'm very interested in your dreams, Bertie. Dreams are very important, you know.”

Bertie opened the notebook. He did not think that dreams were important. In fact, he thought that dreams were silly, and hardly worth remembering at all. Indeed, he had been quite unable to remember many dreams recently and had been obliged to resort to a dream he had experienced some months ago, so as to humour Dr Fairbairn.

Dr Fairbairn stared at Bertie. What a strange little boy this was–only six years old, and how determined, how astonishingly determined he was to suppress the Oedipal urge. It would come out, of course, but it might take some time, and dream analysis could help. All would be revealed. There would be father figures galore in this dream; just wait and see!

“I was on a train,” read Bertie. “I was on a train and the train was going through the countryside. There were fields on either side of it and there were people standing in the fields waving to us as we went past.”

“Were these people men or women?” asked Dr Fairbairn gently, his pencil moving quickly across the paper. They would be men, of course: fathers…watching, scrutinising.

“Girls,” said Bertie. “Girls with wide-brimmed hats. All of them were girls.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded. “I see,” he said. “Girls.” Waving goodbye to girls? To mother, of course; that was mother in the field, being left behind by the masculine train.

“Yes,” said Bertie. “Should I go on, Dr Fairbairn?”

“Of course.”

“I looked out of the window of the train and then I went back into the compartment. It was an old train, and there were separate compartments, with wood panels on the walls. I sat there for a while, and then I got up and went out into the corridor. It was a long corridor and I began to walk down it, looking into the other compartments as I went along.”

“And who was in the compartments?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “Was your father there?”

“No,” said Bertie. “I did not see my father. He must have been in his office–at the Scottish Executive. No, I did not recognise anybody on the train. They were all strangers. Strangers and dogs.”

“Dogs?” interrupted Dr Fairbairn. “How interesting!”

“One of the dogs was a big furry dog. He looked at me and barked.”

Bertie looked at Dr Fairbairn, who had stopped writing when he mentioned the dog and who was staring at him in a very strange way. He wondered whether the time had come to make his escape, but the psychotherapist did not move. Dr Fairbairn was thinking about the dog. A large furry dog could only be one thing…a chow. And that, as every follower of Vienna was only too aware,
was precisely the breed of dog owned by Sigmund Freud.
Already the title of a paper was forming in his mind:
Echoes of the Freudian Chow: nocturnal symbols and a six-year-old boy
.

“Chow,” said Dr Fairbairn quietly.

Bertie looked up sharply. This must be a signal.

“
Ciao
,” he said quickly, and rose to his feet.

For a moment, Dr Fairbairn looked puzzled, but then he glanced at his watch and nodded to Bertie. He wanted to speak to Irene, and there would be ten minutes or so before his next patient arrived.

“Ask Mummy to come in for a moment,” he said to Bertie. “You don't mind waiting in the waiting room, do you?”

Bertie did, but did not say it. There was no point. There was nothing he could do to make his life more as he wanted it to be. His life was so limited, so small in its room. Waiting. Listening. Being lectured to. Told to write his dreams down. Taken to the floatarium. Forced to learn Italian. And there were years of this ahead of him–year upon endless year.

23. An Astonishing Revelation Is Almost Made

Bertie sat quietly in the waiting room, paging through a magazine. He hated it when his mother went in for what she described as her “few quick words” with Dr Fairbairn. To begin with, it would be more than a few words, and they were never quick–she would be ages, he thought–and then he knew that they were discussing him, and he resented that.

Dr Fairbairn had promised him that he would not tell his mother about that list he had made him write down, but Bertie was sure that he would do just that, and would in all probability show it to her too. Dr Fairbairn was simply too unstable to be trusted, Bertie thought, and it astonished him that nobody had yet noticed just how dangerous he was. They would find out one of these days, of course, when Dr Fairbairn finally attacked one of his patients, and then he would be able to say that he had seen it all along. But until then nobody would listen to him.

Bertie turned the pages of his magazine, an old copy of
Scottish Field.
He liked this magazine, because it had pictures of people fishing and advertisements for waterproof clothing, for fishing tackle, and for multi-bladed penknives. Bertie had seen an article on how to tie a fly, and had been fascinated by what he had read. He could try that, perhaps, if only somebody would teach him–which of course they never would. He imagined that that was the sort of thing one learned at Watson's, with boys like Jock; and what fun it would be to cut up the little bits of feather and then tie them together to resemble a fly. That would be far more fun than cutting up old copies of the
Guardian
to make chains of paper men.

Bertie found himself perusing the social section, at the end of the magazine. He studied the pictures carefully. The life depicted there looked such fun. There had been a vintage-car rally, and a party afterwards, and the people were standing about their old cars, drinking glasses of champagne, their motoring glasses pushed over the brow of their heads. They were handsome, exciting-looking people, and the cars were so beautiful; unlike our car, thought Bertie–and we don't even know where our car is parked.

He stared at the people in the photograph. A tall man was smiling at the camera–that was Mr Roddy Martine, it said underneath. It would be wonderful to be as tall as that, thought Bertie. Nobody would try to push Mr Roddy Martine over, thought Bertie; they wouldn't dare. And next to him was a kind-looking man with a moustache–Mr Charlie Maclean, it said. He was holding a fishing rod and smiling. What fun they were all having, thought Bertie. At least there are some people in Scotland who can have some fun. Perhaps Mr Charlie Maclean had a son, he thought, and I could meet him and he could be my friend, as Jock so nearly was. There was no photograph of Dr Fairbairn, Bertie observed, nor one of anybody he knew. Even Mr Dalyell, that nice man he had met in Valvona and Crolla, was not pictured here. Bertie sighed.

Inside the consulting room, Irene sat in the chair so recently vacated by Bertie. She looked at Dr Fairbairn and noticed his tie. She always noticed his clothes–the lightweight blue linen jacket, perfectly pressed in spite of linen being such a difficult material. And the tie, with its enigmatic decoration; of course that was just right: life was a quest, and why should ties not reflect the fact?

“Linen's so difficult,” she said. “How on earth do you manage to keep your jacket so uncrumpled? Linen defeats me.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled; a modest smile, thought Irene. There was nothing triumphalist about Dr Fairbairn, even if he had the insights.

“This is a mixture, actually,” said the psychotherapist. “It's mostly linen, but they've added an artificial fibre–just a little. It makes all the difference. I hardly have to iron this jacket.”

“I must get the details,” said Irene. “I have a linen top which looks just like Auden's face.”

“After the geological catastrophe?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “Or before?”

This was a very clever reference–in fact, both of these were very clever references, and they both allowed themselves a small smile of satisfaction. Auden had referred to the sudden deep lining of his features–caused by a skin condition–as a geological catastrophe. Few people knew this, of course, but
they
did.

“He might have written
In Praise of Linen,
” went on Dr Fairbairn. “If it form the one material…”

“Which we, the inconstant ones…” supplied Irene.

“It is chiefly because it is difficult to iron,” ended Dr Fairbairn, with a flourish.

They both giggled. Irene looked down at Dr Fairbairn's houndstooth trousers–such a discreet check, she thought–and at his highly-polished shoes.

“You take such trouble with your clothing,” she said. “So few Scotsmen do.” She paused. “But I suppose we should talk about Bertie.”

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn, frowning slightly. “We did a bit of dream work today. Made a start on it at least.”

“He never says anything about his dreams,” said Irene. “He's gone quite silent on me, in fact. It's almost as if my little boy has become a stranger.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded. “You must expect that.” He paused. “Any signs of further obsessional behaviour?”

Irene looked up at the ceiling. There had been nothing quite as bad as the setting fire to Stuart's
Guardian
, but there certainly had been little things. There had been deliberate mistakes with Italian verbs (a mixing up of past participles, for example), and there had been reluctance, marked reluctance, to practise his scales for his grade seven saxophone examination. But apart from that, there had been very little one could put one's finger on.

Dr Fairbairn waited for Irene to say something, but she was silent. “Of course, Bertie could be affected by tensions within the home–if there are any. Do you mind if I ask you about that? Do you mind?”

Irene looked down at the floor. “Of course, you can ask,” she said. “And the answer that I'd give you would be this. Yes. There are tensions, but they're not my fault. It's not my fault that I'm bored. Yes, I'm bored. I feel like a wretched Madame Bovary. I'm trapped, and my only way out, my only way out to a life that is bigger, and more exciting, is through my little boy. My little boy who will grow up to be everything that his father is not. I am determined on that, Dr Fairbairn, I really am.”

Dr Fairbairn waited for her to finish. Her voice had risen; now it subsided, and she sat quite mute, as though exhausted by the dangerous intimacy of the confession.

“I'm trapped too,” he said very quietly. “And you know, I've got something to confess to you.”

Irene looked up sharply. “What is that?” she whispered.

“The time's not right,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Perhaps later.”

24. Bruce Meets a Friend

Now that he had time on his hands, Bruce tended to stay in bed until well after eleven in the morning. He had never been keen on getting up early, in spite of having been brought up in an early-rising household, and now that he did not have to get in by nine to the offices of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black he was making the most of the opportunity to lie in bed, drifting between sleep and a delicious state of semi-wakefulness.

It was a time to think, or, rather, to dream; to luxuriate in fantasy–with thoughts of the ideal date, for example; or the car one would purchase if money were no object. The ideal date would be something like Sally–no, he would not think of her again, that stuck-up American girl who had the gall (and bad judgment) to tell him that she did not want to see him again. How dare she! Who did she think she was, telling him that she didn't want him to go over to Nantucket with her? And as for Nantucket–who had even heard of the place; some remote island with a thin beach and cold water? What made her think for even a moment that he really wanted to go there, rather than being prepared to accompany her as a gesture to her sense of disappointment over their impending separation?

It hardly did to think of all this, and Bruce, turning over crossly in his bed, tried to think of something else. There were plenty of other girls waiting for him, positively counting the minutes before he would say something to them, give them some sign of favour.

That morning he stayed in bed until twelve. Then, lazily swinging his legs over the side of the bed, allowing himself just the quickest of glances at the full-length mirror at the other end of the room, he dressed himself slowly–a pair of jeans, a rugby shirt, slip-on brown shoes. Then there was hair gel to apply and a quick shave in front of another mirror, one that enlarged the face. He stroked his chin, applying a small amount of sandalwood cologne. There was no sign of ageing, he thought; no wrinkles–yet–no sagging. Some people began to age in their twenties, or even before; not me, thought Bruce. I do not sag.
Pas moi!

He left the flat, bounding down the common stairway two steps at a time, his footsteps echoing against the walls. Then out on to the street and a quick walk uphill and around the corner to the Cumberland Bar, where George Salter was waiting for him.

They shook hands. “Long time,” said George.

Bruce nodded. He liked George, whom he had known since Crieff days. They were an unlikely pair, in many respects; George, who was much shorter than Bruce, with fair, close-cropped hair and a slight chubbiness, lacked Bruce's dress sense and feeling for the cool. His clothes, which always seemed slightly too tight for him, would never have been worn by Bruce; poor George, thought Bruce, with amusement; he really doesn't get it.

For all his failure to keep up with Bruce, George admired his old friend immensely. At school, he had worshipped him, to be rewarded with the occasional invitation and the general sense of privilege that went with being associated with somebody such as Bruce. He would have liked to have been as confident as Bruce was; to have had his flair; to have been able to talk like him–which I shall never be able to do, he concluded miserably, simply because I'm not clever enough. Bruce is clever.

George bought Bruce a drink and they made their way to a table.

“I hear you've resigned,” said George. “Fed up?”

Bruce looked carelessly at the door. “Absolutely,” he said. “I was bored out of my skin. It was the same thing every day, that job. Sheer tedium.” He paused, and took a sip of his pint of Guinness. “Of course, they begged me to stay.”

“Offered more money?”

“That sort of thing,” said Bruce. “But no deal.”

George smiled ruefully. “I admire your determination,” he said. “Last time I was offered more money to stay, I accepted it like a shot.”

Bruce looked at his friend. Would anybody seriously have offered George money to stay? It seemed a somewhat unlikely claim.

“So what now?” asked George. “Are you looking around?”

“I've got a few irons in the fire,” Bruce said casually. “One, in particular. The wine business.”

George's expression revealed that he was impressed. Bruce would be an ideal wine dealer in his view. He looked the part.

Bruce inspected his fingernails. “Yes,” he went on. “It's an interesting business, one way and another. You have to know what you're doing, but I've got the basics and can pick up the rest as I go along. I thought that I might do the MW course.”

George was enthusiastic. “Great idea. You'd have no difficulty with that. You'd walk it. Remember how easy you found Higher Physics.”

“Maybe,” said Bruce. “It's not in the bag yet, though.”

There was a silence, during which Bruce glanced at George once or twice. An idea was forming in his mind. It was strange, he thought, that it had not occurred to him before, but it was really very obvious once one began to think of it. George, for all his shortcomings, had one major asset. He had capital.

“Are you interested in wine?” Bruce asked.

“Very,” said George. “I don't know as much about it as you do, of course. But I like it. Sure.”

Bruce thought quickly. If he had some capital at his disposal, then he would not have to look for a job in the wine trade: he could make his own job. He could take a lease on a shop somewhere in the New Town and start from there. Wine was expensive, and one would need…what? One hundred thousand to start with?

He picked up his glass and tipped it back to drain the dregs of the Guinness.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said to George. “And then I want to tell you about a scheme I've just thought up. And it involves you!”

George looked up at his friend with frank admiration. He had always wanted to be Bruce, but never could be; a silly, irrational desire.

“Great,” he said. “Me? Great.”